Category Archives: Improvement

A way to store lettuce longer?

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I have been wondering if there was a way to store lettuce and leafy greens longer than the one week expiration date.

Most online help sites say to wash, dry, and wrap lettuce in a cloth and place it in the bottom fridge tray. I do not like this idea because of lint from the cloth on the lettuce. If you do this, be sure to rinse after unwrapping from the cloth.

I am trying a new trick, but I do not have enough data to claim if this method works.

What I do is rinse the lettuce, place it in a separate tight container, a metal container in my case, and then fill the container with water. Then seal and place in the coldest spot on the fridge. This seems to preserve the lettuce longer.

Has anyone tried this, and discovered that it works or does not?

UPDATE: (04 OCT 2013)

Okay. I tried it all the way. Here is what happened: It does appear to last a little longer like several more days. The only problem I noticed is that some of the leaves may get soggy. If you squeeze the water out, you can treat it like spinach. I don’t seem to mind too much. 🙂

It’s time for VoiP: PhonePower it is!

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I have embraced the Internet and digital world well, I believe. I now pay the bills and shop online and do just about everything else online. However, there was always that one thing that I thought I should keep the old fashion way, and that is POTS. Yes POTS. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). I have a POTS landline at home. 😐 I always thought having POTS would be reliable and safe.

I have come to the realization that telephony and communication apps on mobile devices are quite reliable, innovative, amazing technology, and fun to use. It seems like its’ about time to change the POTS.

Recently, I have noticed that my old reliable POTS has been going up in price (the monthly service fee). Note that I have zero extra features. Yes, that means no Caller ID. It might now be time to consider a VoiP service provider like Vonage, which I have been aware of for a while. I think Vonage has name recognition. It was the only service provider I knew of before starting my homework on this. BTW, my DSL is going up in price too.

If I sign up for a VoiP service, it looks like I will be saving a few bucks per month, well more like $15 – $18, or maybe more. This adds up over time. Also, I will get standard features like Caller ID which I am not subscribed to with my POTS service. I will also get cool features like selected call forwarding, call blocking, call log, mobile app, and softphone.

PhonePower it is!

PhonePower it is!

PhonePower it is! I have now subscribed to PhonePower. They have a rate that is hard to beat. They have several plans, and a lot of features. I like the long-term pre-pay plans. They seem active. Their app was recently updated.

Forget about Vonage. Vonage made a deadly mistake in their product advertising. They criticized another company, Microsoft. This is not cool to talk bad about another company especially a company like Microsoft. If not for a company like Microsoft, Vonage would probably not exist. It caught my attention when they talked bad about Microsoft. I knew doing this was a big no no. The next thing I did was install their mobile app. They do not allow/have not designed their mobile app to work on the iPod Touch. This was a deal breaker. Criticizing another company and a dead beat app was enough to propel me to look for another provider. Lo and behold, PhonePower got on my radar. They have top ranked reviews, and their price is hard to beat.

I compared PhonePower to Via:Talk. Via:Talk has a slightly lesser review. What turned me off about Via:Talk was that their website still shows copyright 2009. They have not updated it. Also, their mobile app looks cheaply designed since it is barely one megabyte in size, and it has not been updated since 2009. I read a review that said the Viatalk mobile app is only an interface to their website. When I compared Viatalk’s Advanced features to PhonePower, I noticed that Viatalk’s advanced features are pretty much standard features on PhonePower’s service. Some Viatalk advanced features are standard features on PhonePower to the point where the same feature is not even mentioned by PhonePower at all much less considered an advanced feature. For instance, Viatalk says you can record calls which is an advanced feature. Well, PhonePower does the same thing with their free Softphone, and the feature is not even mentioned by PhonePower!

I started to wonder if the Viatalk advanced features were really advanced features or not. I got the impression that they were not since PhonePower did not consider them advanced features. I also wondered if when they mentioned Call Record, that this was a ploy to make users seriously consider Viatalk. I do not know for sure, and I do not want to speculate. However, I just want to point out that PhonePower did not make a big deal at all about this feature on their service.

A lot of user reviews about Vonage were negative. I know there will always be a group of people out there who will always complain, but I am now kinda glad I did not try it out. I also noticed after doing some homework that Vonage was sued once or more than once. Their stock price is also dismal.

An official review mentioned that the Vonage service price was among the highest compared to its peers, but at the time I did not know what provider would be a serious competitor to Vonage. Now I know! This did leave a question mark in my mind to know that Vonage was higher priced.

I am looking forward to my new VoiP toys with PhonePower! and the great savings!

What to do with soap bar remains

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Soap Remains

A quick and easy way to “get rid of” or “do away with” or “solve the problem with” the tiny bits of soap bar pieces and remains that you are left with in the shower is to stick it to a new bar of soap. The trick is knowing when to do this. Should you do it at the start of a shower, during a shower, or after a shower? The answer is to do it after a shower because the soap bar remains will have time to dry onto the new bar of soap without the presence of running water. If you do it at the start of a shower, the remains will not be able to stick to the new bar of soap due to all the running water.

If you tried this in the past, and it did not work, then this may have been the reason, an issue of timing.

For the sink, just get the new bar of soap and the left over pieces wet. Then let the new combo sit overnight.

If you devote the time, you can do it the hard way.

If you do activities like this, you may be a resource conscious person like me.

Soap Bar Remains - Multiple Pieces

Soap Bar Remains – Multiple Pieces

A little planning and preparation up front goes a long way

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I find myself in this situation a lot especially as I get older. I tend to spend time up front planning and preparing for a lot of things. For instance, if I go to the library to work on a project, I will prepare a sandwich to take with me so that I can spend a little longer working my project. If I go on a business trip, I painstakingly do all the preparations and planning up front for the trip. Doing this removes any headaches or potential complications. Who wants to deal with problems when it could have been avoided with a little preparation and planning? You can also get the best experience out of something if you plan and prepare for it.

Important Organizing Discovery – File System

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Over the years I have accumulated this particular physical category of items that I had a strong desire to get organized, but I always hesitated to tackle the task because I knew I may run into trouble with organizing it. Taking on this task turned out to be an excellent experience in organizing because I discovered a significant new scheme in organizing. I would not have made this discovery if I did not go through this experience. I am not sure that I can describe this as a breakthrough, even though that sure does sound appealing. It is though a significant organizing change and improvement that I made. The neatest thing about this discovery is that I have been able to port the concept to my computer file system, and maybe even to other types.

Are you ready? Do you want to know what the discovery is?!!

I have separated types into Personal and Non-Personal. I use the word ‘types’ because this scheme can be applied to almost anything that has the potential to be sorted/categorized this way. This scheme may seem trivial to you, but it is such a huge improvement. It would be even more meaningful to go through the above described experience, and to see the satisfaction in accomplishing an organizing task.  Applying this also leads to follow-on benefits that you will later start to see, like for instance back-ups. It should be a no-brainer that backing up Personal computer documents has a higher priority than backing up Non-Personal computer documents. Personal pictures might be backed up to a space that is different from a back-up space for Non-Personal pictures. It is not just documents that this can apply to!

Here is a screen shot of my computer files illustrating the concept:

Documents - Personal and Non-Personal

Documents – Personal and Non-Personal

The same applies to Videos. In all, this concept has been applied to Documents, Pictures, and Videos:

Pictures & Videos - Personal and Non-Personal

Pictures and Videos – Personal and Non-Personal